Vale Doug Fry

News was received in the office recently of the death of former staff member, Doug Fry who was a teacher here in the 1980s. Doug was a friend and contemporary of Kilbreda legends, Danny McConnell, Roger Wander and Patsy Riordan. Doug was instrumental in bringing computer technology to Kilbreda, setting up the first Microbee computers in the hallway outside Room 8, which at that point was the Year 11 area. In Roger Wander’s words a “huge contributor to Kilbreda’s emergence into the computer age.”

Despite being much more rudimentary than modern computers, the idea was firmly placed in the minds of staff and students and I’m sure Doug would have been amazed to see how far technology had come at Kilbreda. Doug was assisted by his former Principal, Sr Angela Ryan, to look beyond the teaching world to continue working in that field, gaining a position in the late 80s in the SEC (State Electricity Commission).

He was 72. He is the bearded man fourth from the right in the staff photo below from 1982. The other image above shows the very first computers being used by a contemporary of Ms Dempster and Ms Callaghan, Rose Hondros.

Damian Smith
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